Exmouth

We made it to Exmouth for Becky’s 24^th birthday… not a massive town, but big enough for us to celebrate! On our check-in evening we met Dennis, a little old biker who appeared to have had one too many beers. We told him about Becky’s birthday and he promised to take us out for a meal tomorrow evening to the site’s restaurant to celebrate… we wondered if he’d actually remember in the morning!

We woke the next morning to some bad news that Becky's house had been broken into at home. Sadly lots of valuables were taken, but luckily 'Beans' her cat was safe and sound. Even after some bad news, we were determined to have a good day, so we went for breakfast at a local organic café in the town. After a little while we decided it wouldn't be a birthday without some birthday cake, so we indulged in an extremely sickly piece of chocolate cake from the bakery.

We decided to take the opportunity to chill out and had a day relaxing by the pool, not really doing a whole lot, other than pretending to play Becky’s new present from Lydia, an inflatable pink guitar.

  

We bumped into Dennis in the day, who did in fact remember our plans and promised to take us out for a meal in the nice restaurant on him. Whilst getting ready for the birthday meal, Becky received some even more bad news that her Great Nan Dip, at almost 94 years of age, had sadly passed away. As difficult as the news was to take in, Becky knew that her Nan wouldn't want it to spoil her day, but to celebrate it more instead. So at 6:30pm sharp, we met with Dennis and his colleague Shane, who also worked on site, and went for a lovely birthday meal. We went all out and ordered pink champagne, the biggest main course of salmon we’ve ever had and then Becky was surprised with an ice cream desert including a candle, sparkler and a chorus of happy birthday from the waiter.

In the morning we awoke bright and early as we had agreed to a day of fishing with Shane, or rather that we’d begged him to take us out on his boat on his day off! We tentatively drove down to the marina with the boat trailing behind the car and hopped aboard for a day of fishing out on the reef.

Shane showed us how to cast our lines out and it didn’t take long before our lines started twitching. Shane was laughing out loud, when Becky turned around and shouted out “What do I do now?!?!”, when her first fish hooked onto her line… “Pull it in, of course!” he shouts back.

We reeled in lots of snapper and even a cod. We were catching so many that Shane stopped fishing altogether and put all his effort into preparing the bait and sorting out our lines.

After four hours of successful fishing, moving anchor several times and a dozen or so fish in the cool box for dinner, we wondered whether to call it a day… but we wanted to catch one more thing that Shane had promised we may be lucky enough to find, a shark! We were both sure that we’d had it on our lines at some point, after some very large tugs and the fishing hooks being bitten off completely. All was quiet when Lydia felt a little tug on her line… “ooohh, I think I’ve got something guys!”…   Then all of a sudden, WHOOOSH!!! Nearly the whole of Lydia’s line went flying out and we were all screaming (well, just us girls!). Shane quickly took over the fishing rod, in hope that his expertise would help us to catch the mysteriously strong fish on the end of the line. The fish had taken so much of the line, so very quickly, that Shane wasn’t sure if we were going to catch it. He shouted out the orders to us; Lydia running around, moving obstacles out of the way and Becky chasing him around the boat with the net, ready to quickly scoop up whatever we had caught when it reached the surface. We continued like this for a whole five minutes, running around like headless chickens and Shane even climbing along the front of the boat, looping the fishing rod underneath the anchor when the fish was giving him the chase. FINALLY, it appeared on the surface of the reef and Becky scooped it up in the net… it was a shark!!!!! We were jumping up and down on the boat!

After some celebratory photo taking, we had a majority vote and decided that after all the effort to catch it, Shane would fillet it and we’d have it for dinner. He did an excellent Bear Grylls job on the shark and the other fish and we headed back inland. He even let us drive the boat on the way back! Lydia got a little excited and throttled the engine a bit too hard whilst having the wheel turned and then tried to drive standing up and her cap got taken by the wind into the ocean… FAIL!

Shane said it was the most fun he’d had fishing in a long time, more so because he was laughing us at the whole time! Who knew fishing could be so much fun eh?!

When we arrived back at the camp site, we bumped into a friend of Becky’s from Sydney, Lloyd, and had an afternoon of silly games in the pool and sunbathing. All the fish we cooked made a brilliant meal for everyone on the evening and we had lots of campers coming over to admire and try the shark we had caught that day. What a great feeling! The shark, by the way, tasted delicious.

Exmouth had been one of our favourite places so far, lots of enjoyable memories. However, as with all road trips we had to continue moving on, so we headed off the next day to continue our journey down the coast. We came across Coral Bay, which was a stunning beach cove and stopped there for a walk on the beach and some lunch.

Although Coral Bay was beautiful, we didn't stay long as our next stop would be Monkey Mia, where the dolphins hang out.

Peace and Love,
Lyds & Bex
xxxxx